One wonders how close to the fine line of treason the mainstream media folks like Lester Holt are truly dancing along when it comes to how they report

Misleading Security Clearance Revocation Story

I don’t normally watch the alphabet networks or liberal left media outlets. While up north in Oregon, however, a person I am visiting is fond of NBC. During a commercial earlier in the day, yesterday, advertising the upcoming episode of the network’s NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, the host looked me in the eye through the camera lens and my television screen and said, “The president is revoking security clearances of government officials who criticize him.”

What?

If I was not politically savvy, and that was all I was hearing, I’d probably hate President Trump, too. Except, the statement was not altogether truthful. There’s more to the story than Lester Holt was revealing.

I imagined the average viewer hearing what Holt said, and thinking, “Gosh, that blankety-blank President Trump is punishing people who dare to be critical of him - what a narcissistic tyrant.”

Except, as I said earlier, that’s not entirely true.

The whole brouhaha began when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Trump’s behalf that the administration would revoke Brennan’s security clearance, saying he “has a history that calls in to question his objectivity and credibility.”

“Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations, wild outbursts on the internet and television about this administration.”

“I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation’s classified information, including by controlling access to it. Today, in fulfilling that responsibility, I have decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” Trump said in the statement dictated in the White House briefing room by his press secretary Sarah Sanders. “Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets.”

Are Brennan’s free speech rights truly being interfered with if his security clearance, which he no longer needs, is revoked?

Brennan responded by tweeting, “This action is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent.”

Brennan served as CIA director under the Obama administration, and in January of 2017 left his service to the federal government. Brennan now serves as a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

CNN reported that “The White House provided no evidence that Brennan has misused his security clearance since leaving government.”

The statement by the Trump administration was not that Brennan had misused his security clearance, but that he “leveraged his status” as a “former high ranking official with access to highly sensitive information.”

James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said Brennan has not accessed classified information since leaving his position in January 2017. “Will the republic stand or fall on whether John (Brennan) retains his access to classified information? Of course not. The larger issue here, to me, throughout has been infringement on First Amendment rights and I think people ought to think seriously about that,” Clapper said on CNN.

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Brennan, first of all, is no longer a government official that is employed directly under the executive branch

As a former government official who is critical of the President of the United States, are Brennan’s free speech rights truly being interfered with if his security clearance, which he no longer needs, is revoked? There has been no law passed by Congress, or signed by the President, that says Brennan cannot say what he wants to say. The decision by the president is a matter of security. If someone says he hates the person who heads the executive branch, should that person continue to have access to classified information through the executive branch after he no longer works for said branch of government?

Let’s examine the problem using an example in the private corporate world.

What if a former employee, who hated the boss of a company, was let go? That former employee, believing that the new management is bad for business, then decides to put out unfounded criticisms about the company in order to hurt its relationship with consumers by going to the mainstream media to bad-mouth the CEO of the company, and the attacks are reported across the country. As a former member of the company, while the former employee doesn’t have the keys to the office anymore, should he be allowed to still have access to the internal computer system that accesses records regarding the company? And if his password is revoked so that he can’t log into the company’s computer records, is the action of revoking his access to those records a direct attack on his ability to speak out against the company if he should decide to do so?

The answers are obviously, “No.”

Brennan, first of all, is no longer a government official that is employed directly under the executive branch, so Lester Holt’s statement about security clearances of “government officials” being revoked because they criticize President Trump is not necessarily completely true (at least when it comes to Brennan). Second, it has not been as much about the criticisms as much as it is about the fact that the person criticizing no longer has a need for those security clearances, especially if it is possible that they may use that information to act in a manner that may be detrimental to the security of the United States of America.

Democrat liberal left progressive nut-cakes are out there claiming that the revocation of security clearances is a tyrant’s way of silencing critics

That said, current officials are also being considered when it comes to the security clearance revocation plans of the administration. Trump has announced that he plans to revoke the clearance for Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, for example.

Again, let’s go to the CEO of a private sector company example to properly examine the situation.

If a member of a corporate team is openly hurting business, should the records that have a direct impact on the ability of that corporation to do business still be something that the critic still has access to? If an employee of a company is using company information that is not supposed to be available for public consumption for security reasons, should that employee still have access to those files? To be honest, if I was that CEO, I would not only be revoking that person’s access to that information, I would be handing them their pink slip and showing them the way to the exit.

In short, while the Democrat liberal left progressive nut-cakes are out there claiming that the revocation of security clearances is a tyrant’s way of silencing critics, the reality is that it is not as much an effort to silence critics as it is an effort to protect the security of the country, and to safeguard the intelligence records of the federal government from being potentially misused by persons who may not be able to be fully trusted with that information as characterized by their inflammatory rhetoric.

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However, the average hard-left Democrat Hillary voter isn’t hearing that side of the story. They are not being exposed to the full context of the issue, and are instead being told that the tyrant in the White House is taking actions to silence criticism without consulting anyone by yanking their security clearances. Hey, if I was an uninformed buffoon who knew nothing more than what NBC tells me, and I was hearing only that side of the story, I would probably hate President Trump too.

In other words, NBC’s Lester Holt is not providing all of the information necessary to ensure that his viewers are properly informed. That makes him something that is not a journalist, but a biased orator bound and determined to create damage to the President Donald J. Trump administration, even if it means reporting in a deceptive manner to do so.

One wonders how close to the fine line of treason the mainstream media folks like Lester Holt are truly dancing along when it comes to how they report.

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Douglas V. Gibbs of Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary, has been featured on “Hannity” and “Fox and Friends” on Fox News Channel, and other television shows and networks. Doug is a Radio Host on KMET 1490-AM on Saturdays with his Constitution Radio program, as well as a longtime podcaster, conservative political activist, writer and commentator. Doug can be reached at douglasvgibbs [at] yahoo.com or constitutionspeaker [at] yahoo.com.

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